Olympic la-la land! Neon signs that tell you to be happy, street names like Cheering Lane and the largest (and most joyless) canteen on the planet

The Dear Leader is striding across his domain, pausing now and then to inform the television crews that everything is just wonderful.

We walk up Celebration Avenue, down Cheering Lane and across Victory Park. One of these identical blocks of flats, I observe, is called Festive Mansions.

It must be said that nothing feels terribly festive around here. And it’s not just down to the strict ban on alcohol. Festive Mansions is actually in a district called the ‘Seaside Zone’.

Welcome to planet Games: The Mail's Robert Hardman discoveed a distinct feel of North Korea in the Olympic Village

Victories: Victory Park in the Olympic Village holds accommodation for the competing athletes - both winners and those who fail to get the gold medals

Low cost: This is a place where you can have all the free scoff, free massages, free haircare, free condoms and even free dental treatment you might want, says Robert Hardman

Brand new: There is a pub with free (soft) drinks and helpful neon signs reminding you to cheer up

It is a strange choice of name, given that we are miles from the sea, although there is a nice view of the A12. But then the neighbouring identical ‘Countryside Zone’ is pretty low on flora and fauna too.

Never mind. You leave reality at the door when you enter the shiny new people’s utopia of the London Olympic Village.

There
is no dog mess or squawking to sully this beautifully sterile
atmosphere. Animals, like children, aerosols, bikes, walkie-talkies and,
bizarrely, hard suitcases, are banned. So, too, are the Press — except
for today. So I have come for a preview. And I find the Dear Leader is
in full flow.

An aerial view of the Olympic Park, which will house the athletes for the duration of the Games

Joyless: Robert enjoys a meal in the village dining room which boats 5,000 seats and will see 60,000 meals served daily

Spartan: Robert visits one of the the athletes quarters in the Olympic Village. After the Games the £1.1billion complex will be converted into 2,818 affordable homes

‘This knocks Club Med into a cocked hat.’ It might even start to resemble a bit of London once the Games are over, all these bans are lifted and this £1.1 billion complex is eventually converted into 2,818 affordable homes.

The Mayor of London is attempting to bring a smile and some badly needed cheer to an Olympic movement that is feeling pretty battered. It’s been a grim few days for the lords of the rings.

There was the news that the planners have messed up the security arrangements yet again, as a result of which 3,500 troops are to be hauled in to make up the shortfall.

Then it turned out that the M4 flyover, the main road from Heathrow Airport to the capital, was in such a bad state that it required a week of urgent repairs.

Enjoyment: This is a room for athletes to listen to music while relaxing

Unwind: Computer games are also located in the village

Large: The site is an open-air campus the size of a market town

Massive: The dining hall is apparently the largest canteen on the planet, with 5,000 seats

It was already hard enough to get into Heathrow thanks to the queues at immigration. Now it’s a nightmare getting out of it, too.

To be fair, all Olympiads go through last-minute horrors. And Mr Mayor is doing his best to play it all down here in Happy Plaza or Joy Crescent or wherever we have got to in this germ-free paradise behind the razor wire.

‘In PR terms, this is a trough
moment,’ says Mr Johnson striding on to inspect an aircraft hangar that
turns out to be the dining room.

‘But
there are peak moments to come — a whole Himalayan range of peak
moments, in fact.’ The Olympic Village dining room is certainly one of
the seven wonders of the catering world.

Indeed,
it is apparently the largest canteen on the planet, with 5,000 seats.
Its food counters are as large — and joyless — as airport check-in
desks. The Halal counter alone could accommodate an entire Jumbo-load to
New York.

Organisers point out that you can park 880 double-decker buses in this room and that 60,000 meals will be served daily.

Even
more impressive is the fact that the caterers are scheduled to rotate
1,300 different recipes in every eight-day period in order to vary the
diet. Except for the cooks at the giant McDonald’s restaurant in the
corner, that is. They will produce the same menu they do every day all
over Britain.

The dining room at the Olympic Village Athletes will be provided with a wide range of food, catering to every taste

Global event: The athletes' dining hall is divided up by world cuisine, including a Best of Britain buffet

Powered by chicken nuggets: 100m champ Usain Bolt of Jamaica

Nutritionists may tut-tut about
offering limitless round-the-clock Big Macs to the fittest people on the
planet but the simple truth is that a lot of athletes prefer this
stuff.

To the despair
of the health lobby, Usain Bolt admitted that his record-breaking
exploits at the 2008 Olympics were achieved on a diet of chicken
nuggets.

‘On the basis of previous Games, we expect to serve one in ten of the athletes’ meals,’ says McDonald’s Derek Rogers. Nearby, the Polyclinic is on standby to cope with anything from sprained muscles and venereal disease to heart attacks.

The entire top floor is devoted to dentistry, a surprisingly popular destination for Olympic athletes. The Games means a free check-up.

‘A lot of athletes will come from countries where dental treatment is limited,’ says Tony Clough, the Chelmsford dentist in charge of all these state-of-the-art surgeries.

‘A lot have not had time to see a dentist and a lot use sport drinks that may not be good for their teeth.’

The organisers insist that the London public will not be denuded of healthcare by the Games — nor will the taxpayer have to subsidise most of this stuff.

‘The doctors and dentists and nurses are all volunteers,’ says clinical leader, Laurence Gant. But any Olympians in need of more serious medical treatment will have their own designated service — or ‘pathway’ as they call it — at nearby Homerton Hospital.

Some athletes are never going to want to go home. Olympic sponsors P&G (Proctor & Gamble as was), have set up an Olympic Village salon that will offer free beauty treatments night and day to all-comers.

It has recruited a team of manicurists who have been trained to paint the national flags of every single country on to ten fingernails in under half an hour.

‘The U.S. Virgin Islands is the hardest,’ says Mitra, 21, from Tottenham. ‘It’s got an eagle on it.’ Boris Johnson drops in, followed by 50 camera crews. The nail team offers him a Union flag on the end of every mayoral digit but he settles for a spot of buffing.

The security around here is tight — absurdly so at times. On arrival, I have my bottle of Diet Coke confiscated (‘securiteee…’) then have my Olympic pass rescinded because the computer has got my date of birth wrong by a week.

The Press are all herded on to buses
which, astonishingly, manage to get lost on the half-mile journey from
the Press centre to the Olympic Village.

We
end up doing U-turns somewhere near the Basketball Arena. Heaven help
the public if we get this sort of security clotting on the day — or
‘Games Time’ as we must call it.

It
takes three airport-standard searches before I am allowed inside the
village. I can see why you might conceivably not want to let someone
take a sharp object or an aerosol on a plane.

But
this isn’t a pressurised metal tube laden with petrol. It’s an open-air
campus the size of a market town. What’s wrong with packing a can of
deodorant for a fortnight of athletics?

If you have waited for a couple of
hours at immigration and then spent an afternoon stuck on the M4, you
may have a serious sense of humour failure when you arrive at the
Olympic Village only to have your hairspray and standby bottle of
victory champagne confiscated by someone in a loud shirt saying
‘securiteee…’

So who gets
the apartment blocks with south-facing balconies overlooking the Olympic
Park? And who gets to look north with a panoramic view of Leyton High
Road?

Home from home: Each set of flats enjoys a relaxing lounge area

The competitors will have access to computers, as well as a hari and beauty salon

Relieving the boredom: The recreational area has all sorts of video games consoles as well as table football and pool tables

‘Different teams
want different things so it’s all worked out very well,’ says Charles
Allen, the former ITV boss and chairman of the 2002 Commonwealth Games
who now enjoys the title ‘Mayor of the Olympic Village’.

I
ask him about the diplomatic challenge of accommodating, say, Iran and
Israel. Are the Greeks near the Germans? Mr Allen is not saying.
‘Everyone is very happy,’ says Mr Allen. Of course they are. This is
Olympic LaLa-land.

As if to
underline the sense of being on another planet, the Secretary of State
for the Environment, Caroline Spelman, has turned up with the Olympic
‘Director of Sustainability’ for the grand opening of the ‘One Planet
Centre’.

According to the official blurb, it is ‘a great example of collaboration between London 2012, Government, charity and business … funded by Defra as part of their Inspiring Sustainable Living Programme, managed by leading sustainability charity Bio-Regional, with support from Coca-Cola.’ I can picture the earnest committee meetings, the Whitehall memos, the endless debates about the name, the funding, the logo…

Ready: This is the last aerial view of the 2012 Olympic Park in Stratford before air space over the site is closed

It is a half-finished shed. It is about the size of a large Wendy House.

I genuinely wonder if I have strayed on to the set of Twenty Twelve, the brilliant BBC spoof about the organisation of these games.

But no. Everyone is deadly serious. We are told that athletes will gather at this Government-funded shed to recycle their unwanted clothes and ‘swap stories about how people are saving energy and reducing waste in their home country’.

Perhaps Roger Federer really will turn up with a pair of old socks and some composting tips. Then again, perhaps I might get a late call-up for the 4x100 metre relay.

So this will be home to the world’s greatest athletes for the next few weeks. It is all very impressive, very efficient, very clean.

And if you stay here long enough, you will go stark staring mad. I hope that someone gets round to putting up a sign pointing towards the nearest London Underground station with the words ‘Real World — This Way’.

Gridlock: Car's queue on the M4 Great West Road after cracks were discovered

Security problems: A soldier on duty at the Olympic park in Stratford on Thursday. He'll soon be joined by 3,500 other troops